Braydon (6 page)

Brendon’s eyes narrowed on Braydon, and he felt the heat of his twin’s wrath more then than he’d ever felt it.

But then Brendon walked away, disappearing in the same direction Jessie had. Thankfully, Travis hadn’t stuck around to give him his two cents, which left Braydon staring down the empty hallway, wondering just how he was going to fix this.

Or if he even should.

Braydon made his way back to the club, scanning the room in an attempt to find Jessie. He needed to talk to her. Needed to apologize. She didn’t deserve that. Not from Brendon, and certainly not from him.

But she wasn’t there. At least not that he could see.

Rather than looking like a lovesick fool and scouring the halls for her, Braydon opted to mingle with his brothers. Which was where he spent the next few hours, laughing and joking, pretending everything was fine, when in reality, it was anything but.

Needless to say, his night hadn’t gone quite as he had planned, but his brothers all seemed to be content.

Not that he wasn’t happy for his brothers. He certainly was. Kaleb, Zane, Travis, Ethan . . . They had all found exactly what they were looking for, and he wished them nothing but happiness. But as each minute passed, it was becoming more and more difficult to find happiness in his own relationship. If it could even be called that. It was safe to say that Braydon had royally fucked up.

Giving in to the threesome, knowing that it wasn’t what he wanted, had been the first mistake of the evening. He wanted Jessie, that would never change, but he didn’t want to share her anymore. And his feelings for her were only growing stronger.

And now more than ever, Braydon felt the need to get away from it all. He needed to take a breather, get his head on straight. And thanks to his cousin Tessa and her husband, Cooper, he knew exactly how he was going to go about doing that. It was just a matter of time.

A COUPLE OF
hours later, Braydon was walking into his house —the place surprisingly quiet since Brendon had yet to arrive—making him feel more alone than ever.

For the first time in his life, there was a rift between him and Brendon that he feared they wouldn’t get past without some time apart. Not that he was looking forward to it, but after their argument, he wasn’t sure what else to do.

Now that he was home and some of his anger had subsided, Braydon was left facing something else. Losing Jessie entirely. He’d screwed up tonight. But there was also a deeper fear. One that he’d never considered before.

The three of them had gone into this with one thing on their minds. Sex. Sex for the sake of sex, pleasure for the sake of pleasure. Emotions didn’t have any place in their relationship, but Braydon had gone and done the unthinkable.

He had fallen in love with her.

And now more than ever, he knew he’d never be able to continue on this path.

There seemed to be only one logical conclusion for Braydon. Only one way to fix everything that was broken. Thanks to his conversation with Cooper earlier, he’d found an out that would work for them all.

Heading to his room, Braydon pulled an empty gym bag from the shelf in his closet. Rummaging through his drawers, he grabbed enough clothes to last him a couple of weeks. Then he started snatching up little things that he might need—cell phone charger, iPod, vitamins, headphones, and his laptop. Keys, wallet, phone . . . He was finally ready to go and he knew he had to hurry.

On his way through the living room, his attention was drawn to the mantel and the pictures that decorated it. A quick detour had him taking a closer look. There were several of him and Brendon together. Throughout their lives, they’d been in more pictures than he could count, each capturing a moment. Some of those most memorable moments were laid out before him. Unable to walk away without taking them, he grabbed every last picture from the mantel, including the one of his parents and the one of the whole family standing in front of the Walker Demolition sign. God, they were younger then. Where had the time gone?

Not wanting to run into Brendon, he took one more fleeting look around before heading for the door.

He promised himself he was going to give himself the space he needed, at least for a little while. And in time, maybe everything would work itself out, because he knew that it wasn’t working otherwise.

chapter
THREE

Three months later

“H
ave you heard from Braydon?” Kylie asked as Jessie obnoxiously spun her coffee spoon on her sister’s kitchen table.

“Nope,” Jessie offered without going into detail.

“Have you heard from Brendon?”

“Nope,” she answered, making a bored popping sound on the “p.”

Jessie didn’t have any more answers for her sister than she’d had for the last three months, although she knew Kylie was hoping Jessie would hear from Braydon. Or even Brendon. She hoped the same thing, but she didn’t make that fact known. Granted, Curtis had heard from Braydon, and according to the Walker patriarch, Braydon was doing fine. That didn’t make it any easier for the rest of them.

Shortly after Zane’s wedding, Braydon had hightailed it out of Dodge, so to speak. And by “shortly,” Jessie meant that sometime between when Braydon left the reception and when she and Brendon returned to their house, he had packed his bags and left town without so much as a note. No one other than Curtis and Lorrie had talked to him since. At least, not that she knew of. Not even Brendon.

Of course, that had been a point of contention between her and Brendon for the last few months. Neither of them would accept complete responsibility for Braydon’s disappearance, although Jessie knew they were all three to blame. So they’d resorted to ignoring one another, pretending nothing had ever happened between them, either.

She remembered that night so clearly. Remembered what had happened between her and Braydon in that storeroom, remembered the argument the twins had had right there in front of her. Aside from the few minutes she’d spent with Braydon buried deep inside her, blinded by pleasure from being with the one man she wanted more than anything, the rest of the night had been horrible.

Brendon had approached her as the party was winding down to tell her that they needed to talk. Feeling a little guilty about what the three of them had done, Jessie hadn’t put up much of an argument. When he insisted that they go back to his house so they could hash things out with Braydon as well, Jessie had finally relented. Thinking back on that night now, she wished she could’ve been a little stronger, because what happened after that had been devastating.

“What the fuck!” Brendon exclaimed as Jessie followed him into the house after they’d arrived from leaving Zane and V’s reception.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, glancing around to see what could’ve gotten Brendon all worked up after taking just a few steps inside. At first she was fearful that something bad had happened—a break-in, or worse . . .

“Braydon’s gone,” Brendon declared.

Was that some sort of twin thing? How did he know just by walking into the house?

“Like gone to the store?” she asked inanely, knowing good and damn well that wasn’t what Brendon was talking about.

His answering glare said it all.

Rather than risk pissing him off more, she moved toward Braydon’s bedroom, peeking in the door
way. Sure enough, his bed was made and his cowboy hat and the scraggly John Deere cap he favored were gone. But other than that, there was no sign that he’d done more than go to the store or even out for a beer if, in fact, he wasn’t there. Maybe he was in the shower. Or the backyard.

“How do you know he’s gone?” she asked when it was clear Brendon wasn’t going to explain.

Brendon simply nodded his head toward the mantel. Jessie squinted in the direction Brendon motioned and then looked back at him. Okay, she would need him to explain now because she had no idea what he was talking about.

“He took the pictures.”

“What pictures?”

“The ones of us, the one of our parents, the one of the whole family together,” he rattled off. “Need me to make that any clearer?”

Wow. All this time, she hadn’t paid much attention, but now that the frames were missing, the mantel did look a little empty.

Before Brendon could continue on his rant, Jessie responded abruptly, “Okay, I get it.”

She hadn’t meant to reply so sharply, but suddenly her chest hurt. Badly. The thought of Braydon leaving . . . She’d never even considered that an option, especially not after what had happened between them tonight. Although she had felt the tension between the three of them for the past few months, she had hoped that tonight was a turning point for them. So for him to leave . . .

Jessie worked her way to the other side of the room, purposely putting a little distance between her and the angry man glaring at her from near the front door. “Where would he go?” she asked, ignoring the conspicuously empty mantel and turning to face Brendon again.

“No fucking clue,” he snapped. “God damn it!”

Jessie had no idea what to say to him then. She felt the heat of his aggravation directed at her, and she knew he was looking for someone to blame. Hell, she was looking for someone to blame, too.

“You need to go,” Brendon finally said, and his words were like a slap in her face.

Jessie stared at him, her feet suddenly feeling too heavy to move as she nodded her head in agreement. She did need to leave. She knew it as well as Brendon did, but . . . Oh, God.

She knew that the moment she stepped out the door, life as she’d known it since the night she met Braydon and Brendon would come to a screeching halt.

But that’s exactly what she did.

And that was exactly what had happened. Aside from the Sunday dinners she was invited to by Lorrie and Curtis, Jessie hadn’t had much contact with Brendon for the last three months. Brendon wasn’t going out of his way to talk to her, and she wasn’t making an effort to talk to him, either.

And the fact that Braydon was still gone was slowly killing her.

“Have you tried calling him?” Kylie asked.

Knowing Kylie was back on the subject of Braydon, Jessie frowned at her sister, who stopped Jessie’s spoon midspin.

“Well? Have you?”

“No,” she bit out. “Not this week. Not last week. Not the week before that . . .” Jessie had given up on trying to get a hold of Braydon four painfully long weeks ago. She’d become pathetic with her repeated voice messages and her frequent texts to a man who she had mistakenly thought had cared about her. And in return, the only thing she got was complete radio silence from Braydon.

Kylie sighed heavily as she dropped into her chair.

“Enough about me. I didn’t come all the way out here to chat about Braydon. How are
you
doing?” Jessie asked, desperate to change the subject.

“Tired,” Kylie admitted, a gleam in her eye.

“Don’t even go there. I don’t want to know how those boys are keeping you up all hours of the night,” Jessie exclaimed. Staring disbelievingly at her sister, she added, “Are they
still
keeping you up all hours of the night?”

Okay, so she did want to know. After all, the highlight of her days was generally living vicariously through her sister’s many stories of love and happiness.

“Of course not,” Kylie said, laughing as she nodded her head affirmatively. “Yes. Yes, they are. They’re insatiable, Jess. I just don’t know what I’m going to do with them.”

Jessie laughed. “Right. Insatiable. That’s such a horrible characteristic for your men to have.”

“Insatiable, huh?” Gage’s deep voice echoed in the small kitchen, and Jessie nearly leapt out of her chair. He’d come in the back way rather than through the swinging door, where she would’ve expected him. He was too damn stealthy for his own good.

Kylie blushed. She actually blushed. The woman who was married to two men actually had the decency to turn a pretty shade of crimson when her husband teased her.

“Among
other
things,” Kylie finally said after sipping her coffee a little longer than necessary.

After pouring a cup for himself, Gage moved around the table, coming right up behind Kylie and leaning down for a kiss. Jessie watched, a twinge of envy echoing in her chest.

She’d had that. Once.

Kind of.

Not really though.

But at one point she did have something that bordered on a relationship with Brendon and Braydon. It had actually been the perfect setup, allowing her the freedom to not get tied down, even if it had been a total surprise to her when she’d found out that the Walker twins were into sharing their women. Neither brother copped to having girlfriends, but they were quite open about the fact that if a woman was going to be with one of them, she was going to be with both of them.

Jessie had realized just how true that statement was early on. And she had enjoyed it immensely.